MOST AWFUL RADIO EXPERIENCE

[bored-op]

What you got?

Here's mine:

[EDIT] club, middle of nowhere, packed because the station is there, I AM A ROCK STAR.............until..............I am instructed to MC the WET T-SHIRT CONTEST!! They even let me dump the water. All went well until the last contestant. And let me preface this by saying I have no problem with anyone with a disability............but I do have a problem with a room full of drunk rednecks who liqoured this poor girl up and goaded her into the contest.........So I did the only thing I could do..........I poured the damn water. That made me want to shoot myself. I guess I'll pay for that one day. Still makes me want to puke. In an instant your mind has to decide whether to stop this and have everyone start the "just because she has a handicap" crap or just get the thing over with. That was even hard to type.

Anyone else have a great moment that is scared into thier soul?



[vulgar]

 

[TightwadSquarepants]

Okay...here goes mine. It is a lot different than yours, but still a really bad experience!
It was Saturday, May 5th, 2003. I was doing a 10am-1pm remote for K-Rock at Proffitt's parking lot at the Mall at Johnson City. The now defunct department store was holding an event they called Boards, Bikes and Blades or b3. It was essentially a bunch of either professional or just really good amateurs in something that kind of looked like ESPN's X-Games. Anyways, I had finished the first five breaks and it was just before the sixth at 11:50. I remember getting ready to do that one, when all of a sudden, I only remember waking up with a bunch of paramedics all around me trying to revive me and figure out what happened to me.
If you haven't figured out what happened to me yet, let me explain.
As I stated earlier, I was just kind of standing around looking at some talking points the store manager had given me when I blacked out. In front of a couple hundred people, I went down like a bag of cement, I was later told by the paramedics. And even though it turned out not to be, people were freaking out cause it looked like I was having a seizure! I guess the only consolation is that I wasn't conscious to see my embarassment.
Although somewhat off the point, the EMT's took me to Northside Hospital where the doctor preceeded to miss the fact that I had broken my arm/shoulder and broke three vertebra in my thoracic spine! Even though I told the idiot that my shoulder and back were REALLY, REALLY HURTING!!!!
In fact, it was not until having to go to three different doctors and telling them my back and ribs hurt more than when the accident happened that this one ran some x-rays and discovered that, WOW, this guy really is telling the truth. He broke his back!!!!
If it had stopped there, maybe it would've been okay. But later that summer, I had two more of these blackouts, breaking my back in three more places. From my T5 verterbra...all the way down to my T11, they were all broken to some degree.
The next year, still in considerable pain, I had a spinal fusion on T9, where they found out that I also had a ruptured disc at that vertebra.
So that's my worst radio experiece...other than having worked for David Widener. In retrospect, I think I would rather have a broken back than work for that guy!
Peace
TWSP

 

[Tom Wells]

Owwww, Owww, owww. My back hurts just reading that.
Better get that blacking-out thing fixed. You only have so many vertebrae. DO NOT LET THEM FUSE YOUR VERTEBRAE.

I am in suspense over the disabled lady in the wet t-shirt contest. We need more data. Did the the mentioned lady win?
Was she "more" disadvantaged than a normal contestant under Alcohol's influence?
Was she enjoying the attention that this spectacle provided? If so, she might have felt this moment was one of "equality" where she was able to
participate as well as any fully-facultied person. Do not project your uncomfortableness upon others.
Did you get any idea she felt compromised?
If so, then the "awful" is warranted. If not, you may consider that she has exhibishionist desires, however disabled.
Was the overall event successful?
Tell us more, if you can.

 

[bored-op]

She did'nt seem too bothered by it, or too into it for that matter. She just seemed to be there. Kinda like an "oh well, here we go again look." I kinda thought the same thing about equality. And then made my decision. I never really decided if I made the right call. I try to treat everyone, no matter what thier situation, with the same respect. But in that room, that night, it that tiny little town......I still, to this day, wonder if I wasn't a pawn in someone's sick joke. And if thats the case, and my gut tells me it is, I made the wrong call.

She was in a wheelchair.

That's my worst........or made me feel the worst. I've also got a ton of more light hearted ones, but I'll let everyone else spill thiers first.

TWSP, how are you still walking? What was the diagnosis?

 

[TightwadSquarepants]

Tom...too late...I already had the fusion in 2004 at UT Medical Center. None of the orthos or neruo-surgeons up here would even touch my back. Said it was too risky. So, I was pretty much either stuck going to a physical rehabilitation doctor to do pain management and/or try to find another surgeon to get it fixed. Well, I found one in Knoxville. He gave me the option of 1-learning to live with the pain, 2-continuing pain management until I was either tired of it or I didn't need it anymore or 3-have the surgery and see if that can get me off pain management. I opted for surgery, which has been a mixed blessing. When they cut me open, they found, like I said a ruptured disc, but that the disc material didn't blow out, it ruptured towards the spinal cord and was putting pressure on that. In fact, there had been a couple of times that I either lost feeling in my legs or couldn't feel them to stand up. It always passed, but that's what scared me into having it done.
I was in the hospital for a week, because they had to go through my side and break my ribs and I had a chest tube in and couldn't go home til it stopped draining. Despite that fact and that I was going through a divorce, I went back to work five weeks after my surgery! Probably a mistake, because I overdid it and was exhausted every day after I got home from work because the doctor only cleared me for 20 hours a week and I was going full throttle at 40-50.
Anyways, almost four years now after the accident and I still have chronic pain. The surgery was successful from the standpoint that it took care of the pressure and irritation on my spinal cord, but the fractures have left me with a lot of nerve damage where I walked around for over a month not knowing that I had hurt my back. I should've been in a brace. In my opinion, that's the reason the surgery wasn't a complete success and I am still living with a moderate amount of chronic pain.
The real pisser of the whole ordeal is the fact that none of this has been claimed on worker's comp because the insurance company said the accident was due to a preexisting condition and therefore not eligible for worker's comp!!!!! That decision has cost me a lot of money in doctor's visits, medication, diagnostic testing and, of course, surgery....upwards of the tens of thousands, or right at it!
DON'T EVER GO TO NORTHSIDE HOSPITAL IN JOHNSON CITY. I WOULDN'T TAKE MY WIFE'S CAT THERE!!!!!!!
Peace,
TWSP

 

[Radio-X]

First of all, TWSP, the back thing seems brutal. I can't imagine how crappy that was to deal with...good luck with that...

Now mine seems a bit trivial, but semi-funny.

I had my wisdom teeth removed in the early afternoon. I had told my OM/PD that I may not be in that evening, so I voicetracked my entire night shift the day before. Well...come around an hour before my shift started, the anesthesia wore off and I was feeling dandy. I called up my PD and said I would be there at six to do my regular shift and she could delete my VT's(I was part-time, therefore no sick pay, therefore I needed $$)

So, at 6pm as the last sales guy was heading out the door, I popped a painkiller and did my first announce. Between the first and second announce, I started spacing out. I did the second announce and according to my PD I sounded like "Elmer Fudd on heroin". Quite angrily she told me over the phone that I shouldn't have been there and had the VT's not been deleted she would have sent me back home.

Right before my third announce and after the PD stopped listening I dropped a pen on the floor and reached down and grabbed it, then I thought "I'm going to take a nap right here on this floor until my next announce."

Turns out I slept in a semi-fetal position in the studio until the morning jock came in at 4:45 next morning and saw me there...he must have thought I died. I remember waking up and the poor guy standing over me checking my pulse.

...It was kinda awkward, I must say.

Radio-X

 

[TightwadSquarepants]

I would say kind of awkward. I guess the only blessing is the fact that it was before 5 and nobody else was there, although given the fact that most jocks are unwavering gossips, it was 830 that morning until everyone else found out, I bet?
Oh, and RDXR, glad to see there are other Libertarians out there!
I wanted to tell another story, which is actually humourous, unlike the broken back tale. This actually happened around the same time, but is completely unrelated. For some time, WRZK has done remotes at the Mouse's Ear (for non-locals of the Tri-Cities), it has been area institution of excellence since 1993. Well, excellence if you like flimsly nighties, bustiers, g-strings, thongs and boobies. Yes, it is a "gentlemen's club" or topless bar or something else that would probably be deleted if I wrote it.
Anyhow, the Mouse's Ear would have us out to Gray about five or six times a year, especially if they had someone "famous" from the world that "Boogie Nights" and Dirk Diggler made famous: The World Of Adult Cinema. About four years ago, the "Ear" had one of these starlets there for a one-week stint. On the last night, I and the K-Rock van were there for our remote.
The manager always liked for us to be in the club, so with the noise, we had to do the breaks from the storage room behind the bar. And, of course, they had me talk to the actress on one of the breaks. After it was done, she wanted to take a picture to use on her website's appearances page. I agreed, but little did I know that she was going to embarass me on the world-wide-web. For the picture, she stood in front of me and grabbed my hands and put them on her "chest". Thanks a lot, lady. What if my wife see this and she lets me have it? I ended up telling her, just in case they did show up (which they did) and to soften the blow of not telling her and someone seeing it and telling her.
There were other incidents, too. Such as when the regulars from the club would come back and get on the air with me. I can't tell you how many times they either came close to crossing the line with their language or they actually did. Thank God it was 1130 on a Saturday night.
I never really understood the logic of having a remote at a strip club. Seems like a waste of ad dollars. Plus, it is that kind of business, even on a rock station, that seems to cross that line of decency. And from the standpoint of the talent, it always felt like a "what can I say that isn't over the line, but also what can I say without sounding like a prude?" situation. I mean, I always tried to err on the side of being overly cautious, but later, it felt like I came off as boring. The truth be told, we probably dodged a bullet with anyone saying something that would've cost us a lot of money from the FCC.